


Nightmare After Christmas

by cthchewy (pyrrhic_victoly)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Body Horror, F/M, Ficlet Collection, Gen, Ghosts, Halloween Costumes, Haunted Houses, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Multi, Tumblr Memes, skeleton war
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-11 04:56:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5614729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrrhic_victoly/pseuds/cthchewy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Halloween reverse prompt fills.  (Because I'm slow like that.)  A mix of silly and serious drabbles/ficlets/full-length one-shots.</p><p>1) everyone's in the wrong costume<br/>2) the skeleton war comes to the dream bubbles<br/>3) Cronus discovers the true meaning of "humanstuck"<br/>4) two knights and a dragon<br/>5) the Megido family opens a haunted house</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. There is no Halloween equivalent to Secret Santa

There is no Halloween equivalent to Secret Santa, Rose thought bemusedly. Or there shouldn’t be, but alcohol had been involved, and soon they had been picking random costumes out of an empty can. (Sorry, Mayor.) Rose wore a knowing smile – lips quirked, eyes narrowed – as she watched Kanaya prepare the last of the hanging decorations while dressed as a robot maid.

“Is there something particularly noteworthy about the posterior of my costume?” Kanaya asked while adjusting the cobwebs above the door.

“Just that it is very fashionable for a robot posterior.”

“Oh, well I am the hostess, after all. It wouldn’t do for the robot hostess to be mistaken for a battle model.”

Rose ‘hmmed’ and placed a furry paw on her chin.

“I have heard your ‘hmm’ as you intended me to,” Kanaya said, turning to face her partner. “What does this ‘hmm’ mean?”

“Nothing much. I am getting in touch with my inner wolf, much as you have bonded with your inner robot. It is a wolf’s job to make lecherous advances against the innocent as the embodiment of human fears of the violent carnal desires that reside in the dark woods of our hearts.”

“You are being Hungry Like The Wolf.”

“Yes.”

“For a robot, who has no flesh or blood and is presumably not a pleasure model.”

“Yes.”

“I see.” Kanaya blinked before smartly changing the topic. “I wonder who picked my costume. I wanted to be a rainbow drinker, as you know.”

“You _are_ a rainbow drinker.”

“Yes, but it would have been my version of Queen Lyssen’s coronation dress from ‘A Feral Troll Joins the Rainbow Drinkers’ Court, Etc.’. I was so looking forward to it now that I finally have the natural glow to pull it off.”

“Hmm,” Rose said. 

She was a Seer. Sometimes she just knew things.

-

“Kneel before me, for I am, uh, Queen Lyssen, ruler of the Emerald Halls. And it would be great if I could, maybe get some more punch – I mean blood, if that is a thing that would not be too rude to ask.”

Kanaya tilted her head at Tavros. Queen Lyssen should not stutter or apologize, but she supposed she could forgive him because he was actually demonstrating knowledge of the series rather than coming in a generic caegar store rainbow drinker costume. Tavros was an experienced FLARP cosplayer, and as such had done justice to Queen Lyssen’s jeweled corset and high-slitted dress. Kanaya noted that he had nice legs. The last time she had seen them bared to such a degree was on the Meteor, with doomed timeline god tier Tavros in his Page shorts. The Page outfit was an affront to fashion, however, so Kanaya had been focusing on that – thinking of ways she would adjust the clothing if it were hers and whatnot. And before even that, it was when she was sawing said nice legs off at the waist. They weren’t very nice at that point.

“Moooootherfuck,” Gamzee said from behind Tavros. He was shabbily dressed as Human Rambo, or an approximation thereof. His ammunition belts were made of duct tape and miniature tubes of rainbow candy. The rifle at his back was translucent pink and green plastic and filled with glitter water. “Looking good, sis!”

Kanaya kept her expression serene as she refilled their cups of blood/punch. “I like your costumes as well,” she said.

“Thanks! Uh, I was hoping I got it right because she is, I think, one of your favorite characters?”

Kanaya nodded and threw a sympathetic glance toward the couch. Tavros’ favorite character was currently hogging half of said couch, having a Human Mario Kart match against his bees because no one else would play him anymore. Multiple sources had bitched to Kanaya that Pupa Pan was a vile cheat.

Sollux had originally wanted to be a ninja, Kanaya knew, because he had mentioned some nights ago that it would be the easiest costume to pull off. He’d dress all in black (as per usual) and bring out his throwing stars. Now he’d just borrowed Tavros’ old FLARP clothes, no effort at all.

Hmm. It was nice having her favorite character respected.

-

Pupa Pan frowned at Vriska the ninja, who had just invaded his couch (technically Rose and Kanaya’s couch, but who cares, it was his by right of his ass being on it first tonight) and evicted the bees along the way. She didn’t even _ask_ them to move, just swiped her arm across the seat to clear it. Now he’d have to deal with sulky bees for the rest of the night. Pouty bees. They settled on his shoulders and waggle-coded their indignation to the on-duty bees back hive. His servers would be down to 85% processing power. Bitch.

Vriska wasn’t the only one resentful of their costume choice, or non-choice as the case may be, but she was definitely the sorest loser since she took it as a personal affront that her luck hadn’t been able to help her get a “cool” costume. (Or, well, it was actually Karkat’s suggestion that she pick last so as to avoid her luck powers tainting the sanctity of the random draw, but Karkat and Vriska passive-aggressively bitch-flirting at each other was gross, so Sollux wiped each instance of such behavior from his mind as soon as it occurred.) Vriska was so resentful, in fact, that she was shoving her rumblespheres in his face while blabbing about something or other that he immediately tuned out.

She wasn’t just a ninja. She was a _dead_ ninja with her throat slit and covered with fake blood. Across her chest was the stupid sign she was so desperate to have him see – him being the person she deemed responsible for “putting this l8me-ass ninja costume into the mix”. It said, with all the subtlety of a freshly molted pupa’s first encounter with another troll insulting their lusus, “Killed by pir8s”.

He rolled his eyes, not that they were visible behind his glasses, and finally slumped off the couch to get some food.

“Rude!” Vriska called. Sollux idly flipped her off without glancing back in her direction.

-

“Did you see that?” Vriska asked Terezi. “Rude!”

Terezi shrugged. Multicolored slime dripped off her arms. More slime squelched as she planted herself in the newly vacated seat.

“Ugh, and you’re getting your slime everywhere,” Vriska said, scooting away from the spreading wetness. “Did I tell you how much it looks like you swam in a slurry mixer?”

“Only eight times, but who’s counting? And it’s ectoplasm, not mere slime. I am a very hardworking Ghost Buster whose ghost vacuum-thing just happened to explode.” Terezi was, in actuality, dressed as a troll janiterrorist covered in slime, but it was close enough to a Ghost Buster covered in slime for someone who was blind and had never seen the movie. The costume even came with a laser gun prop that had been standard issue for Alternian janiterrorists.

Terezi gave an exaggerated sniff to her own drenched sleeve. “I smell _delicious_.” The jury was still out on whether Terezi had taken so well to her costume in order to antagonize John, flirt with him, or both. Vriska had pulled Terezi away before she could slobber all over John’s gray-painted zombie face. This pre-empted licking would presumably have come with a side of cackling and an exclamation of something along the lines of “You taste positively trollish!”

Friends don’t let friends make embarrassing come-ons to doomed timeline exes. That was the new number one rule to their moirallegiance.

It was only natural that Terezi distracted Vriska with Mario Kart when she mentioned confronting Dave about stealing her costume idea. “Don’t do it,” she said. “You’ll only get sucked into a rap-off.”

-

Dave was not a pirate. He was pretty much the furthest thing from a pirate. He had, in fact, _not_ gotten “pir8” from the can. The only reason he drew Vriska’s ire was because he, too, was wearing a sign.

Dave was a fairy. A _bitchtits_ fairy. He didn’t exactly know what that meant, so of course he countered with irony. His costume was child-sized, an off-the-rack fairy princess complete with sparkly wings, tiara, and magic wand. The dress was too small, so he wrapped it around his chest as an improvised bandeau for his nonexistent breasts. These were the same nonexistent breasts which now sported the label “bitchtits” over them. He wore jeans so as not to expose too much of the Strider Swag, but his midriff was bared.

Jade looked at him and got sympathy shivers. “Aren’t you cold?”

“Nope. Can’t be cold when I’m this hot.”

“Okay, I totally walked into that one.”

“Yup.”

She poked him with her devil’s pitchfork. It was plush, but Dave pretended to be hurt anyway.

“Ow. Would it help if I said I’m only hot ‘cuz you’re hot. Hot as hell.”

“Hey, no flirting with other people in front of your boyfriend,” Karkat said. There was no heat in his voice, but he took the pitchfork from Jade and poked Dave as well.

“Ow. What is love. Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me no more. But seriously man, what does that mean – I’m allowed to flirt with other people only when you’re not around? That’s just messed up. What kind of cheater do you think I am? I only cheat at video games, and not even as badly as Sollux.”

“Oh god, he’s rambling. Jade, help! How do you get him to stop without… uh…”

:/

Jade’s mouth tightened. Boys were ridiculous. “I dunno, all things considered you’ve spent more time with him than I have.”

“So rude, guys, talking about me like I’m not here. The answer is of course that there is no way to stop the Dave train without ‘uh’, so we might as well get down to the ‘uh’. Now that you mention it, I am getting kinda cold. Looks like there’s room in your costume for two, eh Karkat? Mind if I hop in?”

“Dave. Dave no. I am a troll-sized Rainbow Dash. You do not want to ‘uh’ inside a hoofbeast suit.”

“…Point.”

Dave shut up for the moment. Everyone involved in that conversation was embarrassed it ever happened.

Off to the side, Dirk mentally congratulated himself on his choice of costume, even if he didn’t get to be the one wearing it.

-

“It behooves me to ask…” Equius paused to wipe the sweat from his brow. “That is, from one roboticist to another, what is your opinion of large timepieces?”

Dirk turned away from the wreck that was the bro-on-pony conversation – a new definition of Brony – to regard the hulking hunk of muscles and sweat before him, and also the giant clock hanging from the troll’s neck. “You mean your pimp clock,” he said. This crude utterance made Equius sweat anew.

Equius brought out a fresh towel for his neck and arms. “Er… yes. I am not sure if I should be glad that the themed clothing chosen for me this evening is simple but for the timepiece, and that said timepiece is a mechanical creation which speaks to my interests, or if I should be offended by its impracticality. As this was originally the choice of your human dancestor, I thought I would prevail upon you to share your thoughts.”

“Why not just ask him yourself?”

Sweat, sweat, sweat. “I… am ashamed that I cannot parse his slam poetry.”

“Wow, that’s ironic,” Dirk said with a smirk. “You do know that you are dressed as a human slam poet, don’t you?”

“Oh. I had not realized. Nepeta put this together for me.” Equius reached down to fiddle with his giant clock. It had already been cracked, but warped just a tad more under his fingers. “Please explain.”

Dirk shrugged. “There’s not a lot to it. If you’re trying to tie robotics to it, the link is tenuous at best. I guess it fits better than a roboticist being a wizard,” he said, gesturing at himself. “But Flavor Flav was just some guy who liked to wear giant clocks around his neck.”

“And what purpose did that serve?”

“A whole lot of nothing. ‘Time is money’. It’s a human saying. He was being metaphorical while also being a dick at the same time. Probably.”

“Time is… not my aspect. This costume does not fit me at all…”

“Yes it does!” Nepeta exclaimed, bounding in with a plate piled high with little tea cakes.

“No it doesn’t.”

“Yes it does!”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes! Equihiss looks grrreat!”

Equius blushed and stammered and mangled the clock in his hands. He tried to say something complimentary in response, but it was hard to do so when his moirail had tentacles sprouting out of her every which way.

-

“Aww, Nepeta’s costume looks pawsitively adorabubble!” Feferi giggled at her own puns in a way that was equally cute and terrifying.

It was disturbing to Jane, at any rate, because she had recently come to realize that all the time she’d spent with Fefetasprite had in no way prepared her for the true horrors of Feferi on her own without Nepeta’s tempering influence, and exactly what it meant that she was a troll princess. 

Being a troll princess meant that she had lived under the sea and thought cephalopods were cute. It was cute that she thought cuttlefish were cute. It was _not_ cute that she thought eldritch abominations like her deceased mother figure were also cute. Being a troll princess meant that Feferi had been raised by a tentacle monster. It meant that she was adorably fucked in the head.

“Nepeta’s always cute!” Roxy said. She was apparently impervious to the whispers of the Old Ones that emanated from a spot located exactly on Feferi’s forehead, but about six universes removed. It didn’t help that Feferi was a very realistic skeleton. She stretched her bony painted grin wide.

“Haha… ha. That is most definitely true,” Jane said. She tried very hard to keep her voice from wobbling. She might not have been a gumshoe, but she could still be gutsy! Jane kept her spirits up by stroking her awesome pirate beard. While she missed her usual mustache, she thought it was a good idea that they had switched things up this year. Their costume choices _would_ have been predictable otherwise, she supposed.

Instead of being a wizzord, Roxy now got to run around as a dragon, screaming “Rawr! Imma dragon! I hoard bish – bitches. Well, bishies would be cool too. I’m covered in beaches!”

Said beaches had included Nepeta at one point, and also Jake, because he was a merman. And that somehow meant it was destiny for him to be a beach covering a dragon. Roxy, especially hopped up on sugar, did not run strictly on logic.

Said beaches currently still included Eridan, for “kinda sorta bein a merman, like, naturally?” And also because they were “wizzord pals”. Roxy had given up on getting Dirk to join them for a “wizzerd pail love party”, but for a while there it had been Roxy, with Nepeta and Feferi one on each arm, and a pouting Eridan in a black leather catsuit plus fluffy ears and tail lounging on her lap in place of Frigglish. Jake and Jane giggled behind them.

Then Jake’s buzz had worn off and he’d wandered off with it. Then Nepeta had left too, and Eridan had gone to the little troll’s room and had been in there _forever_ because he’d literally poured himself into that catsuit and probably couldn’t get out of it to piss. Then Jane’s buzz had worn off and she’d started sensing the damp-moss-rotting-flesh scent of inevitable universal entropy using Feferi as a gate and her evening had been… well, not ruined, but close to it. She needed that buzz back.

“Yarr. But where has all the rum gone?”

-

Jake was not opposed to being a merman. He was not opposed to being anything at all, really! Jake’s taste in costumes was much like his taste in movies. He had favorite genres, but he liked nearly everything.

Everyone’s costumes were very nice. Maybe they weren’t the most suited to each person’s tastes, but Jake liked them all anyway. The party was very nice; he liked all the food and all the decorations. He liked everything about everything. Everything was great except for this one pesky little detail: his social anxiety.

Growing up in isolation had not prepared him for a future in which he would have to interact with many people _all at once_ , and do this on a regular basis. It was exhausting. Being at parties drained him of energy at an alarming rate, and Jake often found himself escaping to the sparsely occupied corners.

There were a few people whose presences were naturally relaxing, like John and Tavros, so Jake tended to gravitate toward them when they weren’t at the centers of large groups. It was just too bad they hated each other, or Jake would have invited Tavros to come watch movies in the basement with John.

Aradia had joined them out of interest in “comparative anthropology of troll and human horror films” and also because she was a little bit morbid. But that was all right. Aradia was a good friend. She was a right proper adventuress who agreed with him on the importance of skulls in cinematography. 

Tonight she had donned Jane’s customary gumshoe getup. “A detective must always seek the truth, yes? I wonder if humans are so often afraid of snakes and large insects because of your primate hindbrains. An evolutionary fear developed from when you were small tree-dwelling opportunists hunted by deadly poisonous jungle crawlies.”

“And trolls _aren’t_ afraid of those things?” John asked. “Giant bugs are creepy. That’s like a universal constant. It’s why dropping bugs on people is always a good prank.”

“But John,” Aradia said, eyes shining earnestly, “trolls _are_ giant bugs!” _The Tingler_ played in the background as something started moving under Aradia’s trenchcoat. Her body was morphing, flaps opening and closing, shifting, vibrating.

She didn’t have breasts, John distantly realized. She had _rumblespheres_ and they were _rumbling_. They were buzzing like her chest cavity was filled with cicadas, and all through it she grinned.

John’s scream echoed through the basement in time with screams from the 1950s camp production playing in the background.

After he’d fled up the stairs, Aradia turned around. “How was that?”

Tavros emerged from the shadows, fangs bared in a sinister grin, the very picture of a ruthless vampire queen. “Heheheh. Oh yeahhhh.” He fist bumped Aradia.

Jake curled up on his end of the couch and whimpered.

“Oh, uh, sorry, Jake.”

-

“Rose! Rose, did you know? _Trolls are giant bugs!_ ”

“Yes, John, I know. The question is, do _you_ know how many of them have or have had hatecrushes on you? You are apparently very hateable.”

“Uuuuugh…”

“Giant space bugs hate you, John. They hate you and want to suck your face at the same time.”

“You’ve… you’ve ruined Halloween, Rose. You’ve ruined Halloween! I didn’t think this was possible!”

“That’s called ‘revenge’, John. For thinking you could make us do Costume Secret Santa without consequences.”


	2. skeleton war

**The world dies over and over again, but the skeleton always gets up and walks.**   
**~Snoop Dogg**

-

There exists a version of Dave who lives to be eighteen years old before he finally plays the game. He dies horribly, of course, because any version of Dave who didn’t make it into the Medium at age thirteen was automatically consigned to doom regardless of how much ass he kicked or how many names he took.

Dave thinks this is shit. It’s entirely unfair, but that’s pretty much life in a nutshell. Dave’s life has never been fair. He’d lived all his eighteen years under the thumb of a puppet-corrupted madman, and then once he was finally legal… Once he’d _finally_ scraped together enough cash to fix up his junker of a car well enough to even _attempt_ the drive to Washington for a free place to crash, pride be damned… Oops, there goes the meteor apocalypse. It hits while he’s in a shitty Motel 6 a couple miles out from Santa Fe. He hadn’t even made it close to half way.

Oh, and the rest of the Motel 6 residents perish in flames or something because Sburb’s a bitch and has a one-player-per-household rule. Goddamnit.

The thing about this version of Dave, though, is not just that he’s older when he starts. He’s also had years’ worth of internet irony training over most other Daves. This Dave, unlike the middle school versions or the ones who spent their puberty years floating on a rock with aliens, was around for the golden era of Tumblr memes. He was around for 2014, that is.

(Dave thinks he’ll be embarrassed at what the mini-hims think is cool, but then he sees their precious little thirteen-year-old ironic selfies and he laughs out loud. Baby-him is a genius. The mini-Daves are also getting more action than he ever did, like _damn_ , gray alien booty everywhere. Way to go, other Daves.)

It’s a bit weird to be hanging around kids so much younger than himself, even though everyone is dead and some of them have “lived” for eons in the bubbles. They’re still physically much smaller than him, and sometimes they hit on him which is awkward times for all. So Dave finds himself chilling with the Beforus trolls, who were closest to him in age when they kicked it.

At the first glimpse of the first Kurloz, Dave automatically thinks Skeleton War. Then he meets his first Teen Bro, who’s _sixteen_ , god, what a widdle baby. Still has a bit of baby pudge on those cheeks. Weird as fuck. Also came with some skeleton crocodiles tottering around his bubblescape.

Skeleton crocodiles?! Fuck yeah the Skeleton War is so on.

Dave’s bubble life is pretty much meaningless except for what meaning he assigns himself. So… just like his previous life, then, but without the aging or sickness. Dave is like, ‘whatever’ and befriends Kurloz. He tells Kurloz their plan for the foreseeable future will be to collect as many skeleton lizard-things as possible.

They are doing this army, man. They are making this happen.

When Lord English crashes their bubble, he is met with the cry of “En garde, fuck boy!”


	3. Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?

You don the tank top and leather jacket. Cigarette tucked between your lips, unlit. Hair slicked back, covering the frills of your ears. And paint. Tonight you paint your skin with human makeup.

The peach-tan tone looks strange on you, but you slather it on anyway, all across the skin of your hands and down your exposed neck and collarbones too. To friends and strangers alike you tearfully exclaim that you’ve never felt more like you before.

You tell them you wish you had the guts to go out looking like this, looking true to your inner self every day, but you’re afraid. There’s so much hate and violence directed against the trans community; you wish you could speak out more but you don’t want to be another statistic. You tell them you’d tattoo this pigment into your skin if only you had the money. You say you’ve considered the unhealthy practice of binding your gills.

None of it is true, but they don’t know. They call you brave. They say they are your allies. It makes you a little bit proud, a little bit sly, knowing how easily you’ve tricked them. It makes you a little bit angry, a little bit sick, knowing how low you’ve had to stoop just to get them to look at you with anything other than contempt or dismissal in their eyes. Pride wins out.

The party goes well. You’re surprised at how well the makeup’s held up. It was the professional kind, but still, how unexpected that none of it smeared off as you ate and drank and danced all night. Everyone compliments you on how realistic your costume looks.

It’s half past eleven when you retire. “Too early! Come dance some more!” But you brush them all off with a shy smile. The old folks are out of town, and someone’s gotta watch Eridan tomorrow. You’ve got to be responsible, a model minority, yeah?

The makeup doesn’t come off when you wash your hands. You scrub until they turn pink.

Pink, not violet. A cold dread creeps into your gut.

You hastily shrug off the leather jacket to see that the areas you haven’t painted are covered in humanskin. It goes all the way up your arms. You yank off the tank top. It catches on your horns, leaving a throbbing, echoing pain that you’ve never felt before, but you pay it less mind than you should because the humanskin is spreading. You can _see_ it heading down your chest, violet-tinged gray giving way to that horrid pink-brown.

In a daze, you brush your hair back to see your earfins shrinking, rounding out into graceless human ears. Your gills are gone, sunken under the layer of makeup turned flesh. It’s hard to breathe with just your lungs. Tears prick at your eyes and you blink, hands shaking as you reach up to remove the contacts, knowing full well that what’s beneath is exactly the same as what’s above.

The last straw is when the pain in your horns becomes unbearable and you reach up to sooth the ache only for them to crumble away in your hands. That’s when you sink to your knees and sob and retch into the toilet bowl.

Everything is the same the next morning. It wasn’t just a nightmare. Eridan asks why you’re still in costume, and you don’t know what to say. You could come clean – he’s family after all; that means he’s obligated to love you no matter what, right? But it’s not that simple. No one loves you. No one’s ever loved you without you having to lie for their affections.

So you lie. You say you’ve decided to be brave. The dark circles under your eyes are from staying up all night worrying if this was the right decision, but there’s no going back now. See, brother? You’ve even cut off your horns, and boy what a weight has been lifted. You are so happy to be human now.

He’s horrified and you smile. You say he’ll come around, that he shouldn’t be so transphobic. You lie, and you lie, and you lie. You make your bed and you lie in it.


	4. Scripted

It goes like a badly scripted porno complete with stilted, over-acted lines. That’s probably because it’s where Terezi got the idea from in the first place. Karkat can’t imagine (won’t imagine, refuses to imagine) her encountering a scenario so stupid anywhere else. 

And of course, to make it worse (ironically better?) Dave had to get his grubby screenwriting mitts on it. The result is this: they’re at a Halloween party dressed as two fully armored knights and a blind dragon.

“My sweetest trollboyfriend Karkles!” Terezi exclaims loudly and not at all sweetly, “I have had too many human soporifics and must now retire! Meet me at hive when you are done partying like it’s 1999!”

Karkat plays along because his life is suffering. “Okay, you go on ahead. I’ll just be a moment. See you later at our…. I’m not saying that.”

“Just say it.”

“Our… lovebugnest,” he grumbles. And, under his breath, “Goddamnit, Dave.”

Terezi exits stage left. Karkat shuffles to the snack table. The imaginary camera pans across the room, zooms in on the other asshole in an identical knight costume. Dave pushes up his visor. He’s wearing shades underneath.

“What is up with my bestest broseph. Wow. It is such a coincidence that we are in the exact same costume. No one can tell us apart! Ha. Ha.”

“Yeah, except for the part where you’re half a foot taller and Terezi can sniff us apart from a mile away.”

“Dude, stick to the script.”

Karkat rolls his eyes, but launches back into his lines with renewed vigor. This will be the shittiest performance of his life. “Ha ha that is true. Now excuse me while I get my munchies on and fail to realize that my number one broski is a raging douchebasket.”

Dave clinks and clanks away. Each step is accompanied by shitty mouth-made “sound effect” - _douchebasket, douchebasket, douchebasket_

Karkat sighs. Nibbles on some muffins. Waits the requisite ten minutes before clanking after Dave. Their hive is just down the street. He pushes the front door open to see Dave and Terezi going at it against the wall while still in costume from the waist up, both trying really hard not to snicker. He sucks in a deep breath.

“RAWR THIS IS AN OUTRAGE. TEREZI, WHOSE ALIEN GENITALS DO YOU HAVE IN YOUR NOOK. IT SURE AS HELL AIN’T YOUR MATESPRIT’S BECAUSE I AM AT THE DOOR AND ALSO CAN YOU SERIOUSLY NOT TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A DICK AND A BULGE.”

Dave rips off his helmet. To Karkat he says, “Mwahaha. I’m evil and I ruined our best broship by screwing your girl.”

“Gasp!” She feigns surprise. “Your costumes were the same and I am drunk! Oh noes I am a cheater!”

Dave returns his gaze to Terezi. “And before that, Karkat was cheating on you… also with me!”

“Double gasp!!”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s a scandal for the ages. Are we done with your roleplaying now? I’m getting blue globes over here.” Karkat taps his foot impatiently.

Dave shares a look with Terezi, one eyebrow lifted above his shades. “Whaddaya say? Is there room for one more knight on this dragon?”

Terezi nods and says, solemnly, “There is always room for more knights on this dragon. Come and slay me.”


End file.
